Despite middling reviews (from us, at least), the Dwayne Johnson-starring disaster movie San Andreas is a pretty big hit. Since it seems safe to assume that the reason it’s a pretty big hit is entirely because of Johnson, it’s easy to see that he has now become an even hotter commodity in Hollywood than he already was. Hopefully, that hotness will help Johnson avoid the usual wave of internet cynicism that comes from news about remakes, because The Hollywood Reporter is now saying that he’s is in talks to star in a remake of John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China.
The original was released in 1986, and it starred Kurt Russell as a truck driver who got swept up in a supernatural adventure when he tried to rescue some women who had been kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. Like most John Carpenter movies, it’s now considered a cult classic. The updated version will be written by Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz (Thor and X-Men: First Class), and Johnson is also set to be one of its producers.
Assuming Johnson gets the lead part—and since he’s a producer, why wouldn’t he?—it’ll be a surprisingly appropriate move for him. After all, Dwayne Johnson is basically the modern version of who Kurt Russell was in the ‘80s. They’re both likable, tough guys with a very particular hairstyle (one has a mullet, the other has the exact opposite of a mullet), they both hop around different thrillers and action movies, and they both look pretty cool with an eyepatch. Alright, we’ve never seen Dwayne Johnson with an eyepatch, but he’d totally look cool. Also, we couldn’t come up with any parallels beyond those, but trust us. The Rock is definitely the new Kurt Russell.